Speaker 1: Hi everybody, it's Bruce. Thanks for joining us for another
Speaker 1: episode of Table for Two. Today we're back at one
Speaker 1: of my favorite places, the Tower Bar, for another amazing lunch.
Speaker 2: I mean I usually do the chop with chicken. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's my I'll see.
Speaker 3: I'm going to do the exact same things. It's one
Speaker 3: of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: This time around, we're speaking with someone who has helped
Speaker 1: changed the landscape of television as the co CEO of Netflix,
Speaker 1: but today we're going to be focusing in on something
Speaker 1: very important to him.
Speaker 3: Family.
Speaker 1: Our guest recently wrote a touching forward to the paperback
Speaker 1: version of his wife, Nicole Levant's book, Think You'll Be Happy.
Speaker 3: Oh actually I can take smigula. Normally it takes sparkling.
Speaker 1: But you know you're not going to say you.
Speaker 2: Take sparkling please.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: We're having lunch with Ted Surrandos.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about.
Speaker 1: His in laws, his own parents, and how his childhood
Speaker 1: help shape who he is today. So sit back, grab
Speaker 1: a glass of rose, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Speaker 1: I'm rus Bozzie and this is my podcast Table for two.
Speaker 1: So if you've pulled up a chair today, it's your
Speaker 1: lucky day. We're having lunch with You've changed what TV is,
Speaker 1: how we watch TV. You are a man of such.
Speaker 2: Integrity and warmth, and.
Speaker 1: I've had such the pleasure of getting to know you
Speaker 1: and your wife Nicole.
Speaker 2: We are having lunch today with Ted Sorrandos.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 1: And you know we're and today is an interesting conversation
Speaker 1: that we're going to have because Nicole, your wife, Nicole
Speaker 1: was on the show and she wrote her memoir I
Speaker 1: think You'll be happy moving through grief with great grace
Speaker 1: and gratitude.
Speaker 2: And the second edition has just been dropped.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, and you wrote the prologue to it,
Speaker 1: and I did.
Speaker 3: I've never done that before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell me and I want to talk about
Speaker 1: your phrase I will meet you there.
Speaker 2: I think it's so beautiful. But Rick, how did that
Speaker 2: come about?
Speaker 3: To ask me to write the foot the road for
Speaker 3: the for the book was so important for her because
Speaker 3: and for both of us really, because it's how you
Speaker 3: process grief, for how you process events in your life
Speaker 3: is really up to you. Like you realize pretty quick
Speaker 3: that you don't have much control over these things. That happened.
Speaker 3: We did not anticipate, you know, months before the you know,
Speaker 3: the terrible murder of Nicholl's mother or the you know,
Speaker 3: the timely passing of my father, that either one of
Speaker 3: those things will be true, that we were planning his
Speaker 3: eightieth birthday and we you know, just have Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: It's just it's a yeah, I mean, it's a contextualized
Speaker 1: to a listener. Within a week, Ted you lost your
Speaker 1: father who was about to be eighty, and a home
Speaker 1: break in Jacqueline and she was murdered, and like that's
Speaker 1: like life changes like.
Speaker 3: This, just like that. And again neither neither we could
Speaker 3: have been planned on or thought about or such a
Speaker 3: terrible turn of events. And I think the thing that
Speaker 3: you know Nicole as well, But I think what about
Speaker 3: the thing about her is that she really is this
Speaker 3: kind of EmPATH, and she really is so thinking of
Speaker 3: other people so unconsciously. I don't think she wrote the
Speaker 3: book thinking she wrote the book for herself, but of
Speaker 3: course it's a book that helps millions of people, Yes,
Speaker 3: and it's a she knew going into it. What can
Speaker 3: I do? How can I turn this terrible thing in
Speaker 3: my life into something positive for other people, and that
Speaker 3: was the moment because she had been struggling to write
Speaker 3: a book for a long time, for a few years,
Speaker 3: more of a biography, more was about her, And it
Speaker 3: totally makes sense that what she needed to get over
Speaker 3: is not making it about her as soon as it
Speaker 3: was about somebody else. It was about her mom's that
Speaker 3: it flowed out of her just came out of her.
Speaker 3: So the process of going with her to some of
Speaker 3: the bookstops and hearing seeing the emotional reaction from people
Speaker 3: who've read the book, it's very very moving and very
Speaker 3: very touching. And it was me watching her journey from
Speaker 3: the side and reading around and shearing heron for sure.
Speaker 3: And then she's reminded me one night, she said, you
Speaker 3: know you're you're inextractable from this story. Is this was
Speaker 3: your you know Jackie as she was a mother. I
Speaker 3: say she was a mother, my mother in law. But
Speaker 3: she was everything you'd hope your mother would be, you know, meaning,
Speaker 3: super supportive, incredibly wise, every loving, everything you really want
Speaker 3: your mom to be. My you know, Jackie got to
Speaker 3: be from my mother passed away several years before, and
Speaker 3: so she was great and not just for me, but
Speaker 3: for my kids as a grandmother, unbelievably supportive and engaged
Speaker 3: and wise, and people look up to her, including my kids,
Speaker 3: and so universal.
Speaker 2: When you ever her name is mentioned, it.
Speaker 3: No, she was earned. I mean she's she did more
Speaker 3: on this planet in a very short time. I know,
Speaker 3: you know, you die in your eighties, you figure, oh
Speaker 3: you had a good run. But she jammed a lot
Speaker 3: of life into that into there. And I look at
Speaker 3: that that she's so inspiring in that way. So and
Speaker 3: when Nicole said, you know, the book, the paperback was
Speaker 3: coming out and it was an opportunity for the book
Speaker 3: to reach an even wider audience, and she asked me
Speaker 3: if I would take a run it right in the phone.
Speaker 3: It was very very moved that she asked her.
Speaker 2: It's really beautiful. Your words are really beautiful.
Speaker 1: And the picture you paint of not only sort of
Speaker 1: the trauma of that night and receiving that phone call,
Speaker 1: but also sort of getting the family to the hospital,
Speaker 1: and then the emergence of watching your wife take on
Speaker 1: this moment where becoming the matriarch in this sort of,
Speaker 1: as you said, way that her mother could never have
Speaker 1: imagined but had prepared her that way, and then being
Speaker 1: with Clarence as he departed the past. Where did that
Speaker 1: come from from?
Speaker 3: With? Well, I mean for Jackie preparing Nicole for anything,
Speaker 3: the how beautiful it is, it included preparing her for
Speaker 3: the very worst thing you can imagine, not intentionally, but
Speaker 3: but maybe intentionally, you know. And I think that her
Speaker 3: her the way that Nicole just Rice rose to the occasion.
Speaker 3: There was no time, there's no time for anything but
Speaker 3: for me to step up, right, and she instinctively knew that.
Speaker 3: You know, we're in we're in the we're in the
Speaker 3: emergency room. We're waiting for the word from the doctor.
Speaker 3: So what happened? How was Jackie, which is going to
Speaker 3: make it through this surgery after this shooting? And they
Speaker 3: did the thing that you see on TV where they
Speaker 3: come and ask you to go to a little room,
Speaker 3: right and you know, so walking to the room, we knew,
Speaker 3: you know, that was not going to be good.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 3: And Nicole's brother Alex was there. He was distraught, and
Speaker 3: her father was just overcome with griefs and it's almost
Speaker 3: as if the entire room melted down and Nicole rose
Speaker 3: up because she knew she had to and it was
Speaker 3: just it's a beautiful thing to think back on that,
Speaker 3: you know, such a horrific night. Yeah, to actually watch
Speaker 3: this physical transformation of somebody, somebody you love as much
Speaker 3: as I love to call and know that it wasn't
Speaker 3: like she didn't that in that moment she didn't need
Speaker 3: my help. I knew she would, I knew she would
Speaker 3: down the road, and in that moment she did not.
Speaker 3: It was very instinctive and very automatic for her. It
Speaker 3: was just a reflex.
Speaker 1: I really do love I will meet you there. We're
Speaker 1: going to revisit that. But so, like, let's just talk
Speaker 1: about the actual reel, Like where did.
Speaker 3: You meet n I met Nicoll during the Obama run
Speaker 3: for the first one. I was going to a We
Speaker 3: went to a big fundraiser here in La. It was
Speaker 3: the first one he did after he got the nomination.
Speaker 3: And I was the last person to arrive and she
Speaker 3: was pissed late. Yeah. So her very first words to
Speaker 3: me were, you are late. Words I have heard many times.
Speaker 1: Wait, this was the first time you met, the first
Speaker 1: time I laid eyes on, first time, you are late.
Speaker 3: And she she's like she again, she's immediately she was
Speaker 3: in charge, she was running this event. You take your
Speaker 3: pictures and you get to your table. And I remember
Speaker 3: just having my breath taken away a little bit when
Speaker 3: I walked in the room at her energy and I
Speaker 3: and her beauty of course, but also energy. And I'm
Speaker 3: looking at her and I found myself watching her work
Speaker 3: the room like working around. You go here, you go there.
Speaker 3: She was very, very very much in charge of that room.
Speaker 3: And a friend of ours, Laurence Bender, who actually introduced
Speaker 3: me to Nicole, was hosting a table and that we
Speaker 3: were sitting at, and she came over to tell Lawrence
Speaker 3: you are not the Senator is not coming to your table.
Speaker 3: If you want to meet the Senator, you go to
Speaker 3: that table, and she stormed away again. And so I
Speaker 3: said to Lawrence to go who is this.
Speaker 2: She's a frire story.
Speaker 3: And he said, how do you not know Nicole Avon?
Speaker 3: She's famous in this town. I have no I've never
Speaker 3: met her. He goes, oh, you'll meet her tonight. She's great.
Speaker 3: And so after the event was over, Laurence hosted a
Speaker 3: table at Ago, the former Ago, and said, you guy,
Speaker 3: should you should come? So I said great. We go
Speaker 3: to the dinner and Nicole comes walking in the room
Speaker 3: and Laurence said, switch seats. You should talk to Nicoll.
Speaker 3: She's she's great. You should get to know Nicole. And
Speaker 3: she sat down next to me and we talked for
Speaker 3: three hours with a table of ten, but it was
Speaker 3: just the table for two, isn't that we talked for
Speaker 3: three hours straight.
Speaker 1: That's when that takes over and like the white light,
Speaker 1: everything goes away, but the two of you, like all
Speaker 1: the noise in the restaurant was just and from that
Speaker 1: point on, So then you asked her out on a date.
Speaker 3: Well, we talked that night though by the way, we
Speaker 3: talked about everything you're never supposed to talk about on
Speaker 3: a date, Like we talked about religion, politics, history, everything
Speaker 3: we're not supposed to talk about it, right, And it
Speaker 3: really was an unbelievable experience that by the time we
Speaker 3: I did ask her for a date if you afterwards,
Speaker 3: and she she she had she tells the story, but
Speaker 3: that she had been She said kind of like unconscious.
Speaker 3: I hope I see him again. And I wrote a
Speaker 3: note to her at the bottom, but I said, I
Speaker 3: hope I see you again. So and uh.
Speaker 2: So Nicole has that way about her. She yes, she's
Speaker 2: a manifestor, Yeah, she's a manifestor she really is.
Speaker 3: But she so that then that we met for a
Speaker 3: drink that turned into dinner and after a pretty short time, right,
Speaker 3: we not only were together after very sure you were married? Right?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I mean, if I truly believe, like I shouldn't point
Speaker 1: in your life too, when you've lived enough life and
Speaker 1: you know, you just know, you know, you.
Speaker 2: Know, and it's just like, yeah, let's we we gain
Speaker 2: our life together. Yeah, we were.
Speaker 3: I think we're about nine months in and I said
Speaker 3: to her, I don't know what else I'm going to
Speaker 3: know in six months that I don't already know, right,
Speaker 3: And I was very sure about it, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My next question in reading this, when I was thinking
Speaker 1: about it, I was like, so, when was the first.
Speaker 2: Time you said I will meet you there, like.
Speaker 1: You know, in because there's two ways to be saying yeah,
Speaker 1: i'll meet you there, I'll meet you at.
Speaker 2: The tower, or i'll meet you there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's kind of like that you'll be
Speaker 3: happy in the way, but it was it was not
Speaker 3: a conscious.
Speaker 2: Decision, right, so that you'll be happy.
Speaker 3: To also take that right away, think you'll be happy,
Speaker 3: but i'll meet you there. Is it actually just kind
Speaker 3: of very organically flowed and I sat down to write
Speaker 3: at the first draft, and it's a thing that stuck
Speaker 3: out to me as kind of an like you said,
Speaker 3: it's a string of words, it means very little, or
Speaker 3: it could be life changing, and for me it was.
Speaker 3: And again, meeting somebody where they are physically or where
Speaker 3: they are emotionally, and to recognition that in a life together,
Speaker 3: consequences dictate that things change and and you change, and
Speaker 3: you're not in the same state that you were in,
Speaker 3: and you're not in the same space that you were
Speaker 3: in sometimes and you have to meet that person where
Speaker 3: they are and try to help them through it and
Speaker 3: that they will do the same for you.
Speaker 2: That's very important.
Speaker 1: And it's not always easy, as you know, to meet
Speaker 1: someone there, you know, as we evolve, as you have
Speaker 1: a shared life, a journey, which is really what you
Speaker 1: have with someone when you really choose to spend. Has
Speaker 1: there been a time where to meet Nicole or meet
Speaker 1: or you know, having Hole meet you there wasn't so
Speaker 1: easy where it's like, Okay, I'm gonna get there, but
Speaker 1: I don't know how much.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure, it's all I mean, I would say
Speaker 3: when the first time I consciously remember the meet you there.
Speaker 3: Being part of our life was right after we got married,
Speaker 3: she became the US ambassador to the rahamas sure and
Speaker 3: physically moved to the Bahamas, and I could not physically
Speaker 3: move with her at that time, so we were I
Speaker 3: was doing two weeks home and one week there for
Speaker 3: the first couple of years of our marriage. Okay, so
Speaker 3: our whole marriage was I'll meet you there, and then
Speaker 3: when I would meet there, I would you know, get
Speaker 3: off the plane and get into a suit and be
Speaker 3: you know, you had duty duties on top of that,
Speaker 3: and then also I had to show up for her
Speaker 3: in a way that she was there by herself, you know,
Speaker 3: so to be able to make up for lost time
Speaker 3: constantly and then still invest in time, invest our time
Speaker 3: in each other. We had little bites of getaway time
Speaker 3: together that were not part of duty. And then also
Speaker 3: we're you know, both that we have kids that were
Speaker 3: also needed that attention. And then yeah, and so when
Speaker 3: I have a Sarah an TONI and Sarah and Nicole
Speaker 3: came into our lives and at a really ruckous time
Speaker 3: going into early teens.
Speaker 2: Oh so yeah, with me with Brian and Billy's it's
Speaker 2: not an easy time.
Speaker 1: To begin a relationship with somebody because what you also
Speaker 1: realized that I'm sure the call felt this way and
Speaker 1: you they have to love you like you love her
Speaker 1: and she loves you, because without that it's not easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's and it's bouncy. And I think about
Speaker 3: it the time together and Nicole's willingness to invest and
Speaker 3: lean into them and uh and you know sometimes swallow
Speaker 3: some pretty hard transactions, yes, and also like to step
Speaker 3: into a role and she really did. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think some of Sarah and my daughter's favorite times in
Speaker 3: our relationship together was times that she was in the
Speaker 3: Bahamas without me with Nicole. Yeah, and just really that
Speaker 3: spent some real time and saying with san with TONI
Speaker 3: told me would have these really almost rituals in the
Speaker 3: Bamas that he really loved and enjoyed it. And then
Speaker 3: he would show up and have duty. So like he
Speaker 3: you know, when he showed up he was the ambassador's
Speaker 3: son and they would you know, he would show up
Speaker 3: on an aircraft carrier and to meet people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, And it's funny with when when you were
Speaker 2: a kid and you're like because.
Speaker 1: When you're the step which I hate the word, I
Speaker 1: never you know, Billy and I we don't really use
Speaker 1: step because it's you know, you get past whatever that is.
Speaker 2: But you also have to.
Speaker 1: Maintain your sense of like who you are as the like.
Speaker 1: So in the room sometimes you know, you respect the parents,
Speaker 1: the biological parents, and you might disagree or agree, but
Speaker 1: you have to find that thread.
Speaker 3: It's a difficult road. It's a difficult road and not
Speaker 3: underappreciated too. Yeah, so I definitely think that that is
Speaker 3: something where if you could find that place and people
Speaker 3: comment on it a lot about Nicole and the relationship
Speaker 3: with the kids, Yeah, it's very special.
Speaker 2: Kind of sounds like this could be a good show
Speaker 2: on Netflix.
Speaker 3: So I'll meet you there kind of again started with
Speaker 3: this dual life we had back and forth. Interesting when
Speaker 3: Nicole came back from the Bahamas, it was because my
Speaker 3: mother had just passed, and it was this time where
Speaker 3: she writes about it in the book What a Difficult
Speaker 3: How she looks back with great regret her reaction because
Speaker 3: she was so busy in the role that I was
Speaker 3: talking to her about the funeral and she was talking
Speaker 3: back and forth about work, and then this realization that
Speaker 3: she was not in the right place at that moment.
Speaker 3: But she came to that conclusion on her own, and
Speaker 3: it was led to the chain of events and led
Speaker 3: to her coming home, which was, you know, there's a
Speaker 3: lot that she was needed for here, and then she
Speaker 3: came back and up to work work on Obama's reelection,
Speaker 3: but also more importantly, she came home to be with
Speaker 3: the family. It's so unlikely, not because she's black and
Speaker 3: I'm white. It's because I grew up like very lower
Speaker 3: middle class and I find out later that I'm dating
Speaker 3: a princess at Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on Table for two.
Speaker 1: We've been speaking with our guest, Ted Crandos about his wife, Nicole.
Speaker 1: Levant's parents, Clarence and Jacqueline. Clarence was known as the
Speaker 1: Black Godfather at Motown Records. Jacqueline, or Jackie as she
Speaker 1: was lovingly known, was a huge influence in both Nicole
Speaker 1: and Ted's lives before her tragic murder in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: People don't experience, you know, knock on wood, hopefully what
Speaker 1: you guys experienced within that short period of time. So
Speaker 1: how did the light come back in through into your family,
Speaker 1: into you and Nicole through the darkest hour of that,
Speaker 1: you know, how does how do you dealing with grief?
Speaker 2: As Nicole is written about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like it was very
Speaker 3: it also was organic as as as shocking as the
Speaker 3: whole incident was and the whole dealing with it, this
Speaker 3: whole kind of organic period that kind of started with
Speaker 3: the passing of my father and ended with the passing
Speaker 3: of Clarence a couple of years later, with this tragedy
Speaker 3: in the middle, you know what I mean. So it
Speaker 3: wasn't it kind of eased, It almost eased you into
Speaker 3: it out of it. And and like my father passed
Speaker 3: exactly the way we all hope to, just took a shower,
Speaker 3: put on his pajamas, went to sleep and didn't wait God,
Speaker 3: bless God. He was about to turn eighty and was
Speaker 3: you know, he had lived a life and it was beautiful.
Speaker 3: And then you know, Jackie, with that, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of horrific and you couldn't have imagine Clarence was kind
Speaker 3: of in that, you know, somewhere in between. Yeah, we
Speaker 3: didn't really see it coming, but he was sick and
Speaker 3: said he was you know, uh, And and then what
Speaker 3: we did have is that last week together where he
Speaker 3: you know, he was unconscious for you know, for that
Speaker 3: period of time because.
Speaker 2: He moved in with you and Nicole.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have this whole immediately he came, he came
Speaker 4: from the hospital to live with Nicole and I and
Speaker 4: we and it was like a gift, I say in
Speaker 4: the in the forward, it was like a cosmic payback almost,
Speaker 4: this incredible experience of.
Speaker 3: Having them with us for a couple of years. Uh,
Speaker 3: and to tell great stories. And I took that as
Speaker 3: like almost like a like a built in mentorship at home.
Speaker 3: Have to imagine making deals for a living and having
Speaker 3: clear at the house. Yeah, and he and he veryly
Speaker 3: never he always had great advice, and it was never
Speaker 3: about the deal itself. It was just about people and
Speaker 3: how people react to different things. Did you try this,
Speaker 3: did you think about this? You should ask to mention
Speaker 3: this or that kind of thing. Yes, Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: all the things that happened on the edge of a
Speaker 3: deal that make the deal open, you know, closer enough.
Speaker 3: So really helpful in that way. But we'd have these
Speaker 3: meals together. We just talked about music and we talked
Speaker 3: about life. And he would tell you know, he hit
Speaker 3: a very big repertoire of stories, they kind of got
Speaker 3: smaller and smaller every night. And the story. I'm always
Speaker 3: endlessly fascinated by what stories stayed with you till the
Speaker 3: very very yeah, from childhood or from adult even from
Speaker 3: your later adult lives. And so in that way, it
Speaker 3: was a very interesting thing to watch, and we would
Speaker 3: just spend we got to spend a lot of time together,
Speaker 3: which in contrast, when my father passed fairly unexpectedly and
Speaker 3: he had lost my father had a stroke several years
Speaker 3: before and lost his speech. So for seven or eight
Speaker 3: years of end of his life, we didn't really talk,
Speaker 3: couldn't talk, and so my father was a I would
Speaker 3: say a kind of a long goodbye in that way,
Speaker 3: and Clarence said, filled a big, gigantic void for that
Speaker 3: time that I wish I had with my dad.
Speaker 1: Is there a story that came out of that that
Speaker 1: you had never known? That you were like, oh, wow.
Speaker 3: You know, there's funny. He would say these little It
Speaker 3: wasn't really out of it, didn't come out of that,
Speaker 3: but it's like he planted the seed for it there
Speaker 3: then you find I found out about it later. Actually,
Speaker 3: he would always say these things because he did so
Speaker 3: many enormous things. He would say some things in a
Speaker 3: very nonchalant way. You know. I helped Albell sell Stax Records.
Speaker 2: Just that that's it.
Speaker 3: And then you see this great Stax Records documentary on
Speaker 3: HBO recently, and Clarence changed the face of those artists
Speaker 3: and changed the whole fate and future of a certain
Speaker 3: kind of music because of that deal. And so you
Speaker 3: realized these things later as they come out. He just
Speaker 3: did him. It was just like, oh, yeah, help the buddy.
Speaker 3: I helped the buddy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You you talked about the ability just to keep going
Speaker 1: forward and not be stuck in the nostalgia of what
Speaker 1: was and creating.
Speaker 3: And I love and admire and respect these guys, you know,
Speaker 3: these pioneers ahead of us. And I became very good friends.
Speaker 3: I've been for a for a long time, very good
Speaker 3: friends with Tony Bennett. We did a document before Netflix
Speaker 3: streaming even we did a documentary on Tony Bennett with
Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood, and somebody knew I was a I was
Speaker 3: obsessed with Tony Bennett, and they said, hey, this might
Speaker 3: be an interesting thing. Clin Eewood's going to produce it
Speaker 3: and his team is directing and an editing, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: let's do this, right, So do this. I get to
Speaker 3: know Tony. I joined his board for Exploring the Arts,
Speaker 3: which is a nonprofit that pays for performing arts programs
Speaker 3: in public schools. So after the budget gets cut, the
Speaker 3: first thing that gets cut usually is the arts programs.
Speaker 3: So we come in and backfill that. We do it
Speaker 3: for seventeen schools in New York and LA and and
Speaker 3: through that process, and this was Tony's you know, passion,
Speaker 3: right and through that and so much so that he
Speaker 3: built a performing arts school in Queens in his hometown
Speaker 3: of Astoria. And he named it the Frank Sinatra School.
Speaker 3: So imagine doing all that work and naming it for
Speaker 3: somebody else, right, But that's to me, it's like that
Speaker 3: kind of humility. So great. But I knew. So I
Speaker 3: got to Tony, and then I got Norman Lear, who's
Speaker 3: become a very good friend. And you know, I knew
Speaker 3: once I knew all these guys in there who were
Speaker 3: in their nineties, I knew that these days were coming,
Speaker 3: and have so many of them in the last few years.
Speaker 3: It's just it's kind of opened to either a void
Speaker 3: or an opportunity in the universe.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to look at the opportunity and also.
Speaker 1: The the the idea that you were able to, you know,
Speaker 1: share a journey.
Speaker 2: Where does that fit into your work?
Speaker 1: Because now you have all these really great stories, does
Speaker 1: that inspire you or motivate your help sort of shape
Speaker 1: the work that you've done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look at the idea that you can have,
Speaker 3: that your the work can have a lasting impact is phenomenal.
Speaker 3: In a world is full of distraction and full of noise,
Speaker 3: something that really stands out or sticks around is pretty special.
Speaker 3: We were talking before we started here about how young
Speaker 3: people don't really know old things right, and we grew
Speaker 3: up on old things right. So the reason I think
Speaker 3: one of the things that really influenced my success had
Speaker 3: been I grew up watching I couldn't sleep at night.
Speaker 3: I was not never a big sleeper, like five hours
Speaker 3: a night when I was a kid. So you watch
Speaker 3: late night TV. So I watched. I knew every episode
Speaker 3: of the Jack Benny Show, the Dye Griffis Show, Thank You,
Speaker 3: I Love Lucy, And so for me, I was really
Speaker 3: shaped by those early days of comedy and and so
Speaker 3: for me and that influences I desire to make things
Speaker 3: that people can't wait to see. I remember reading an
Speaker 3: article about I Love Lucy was so popular and it's
Speaker 3: peak that during the commercial breaks, the water pressure in
Speaker 3: New York City would drop because that's what people would wait,
Speaker 3: everyone's going to go to the time. And it's like
Speaker 3: that impact our custure. And then you know, the other night,
Speaker 3: we had a hundred million people around the world watching
Speaker 3: the Jake powfight. Yeah you know, I mean yeah, you
Speaker 3: so back fifty years to find an audience that big, right,
Speaker 3: and especially for you know, for for a boxing match
Speaker 3: was back with Muhammad Ali was fighting on ABC to
Speaker 3: get a bigger and after that, the next biggest audience
Speaker 3: at the same time would have been the Mash finale
Speaker 3: over forty years ago, right exactly. So so so a
Speaker 3: lot of these things will stick with me about what
Speaker 3: to do and and to get to know people who
Speaker 3: have done it way before me. That's you know, that's
Speaker 3: a gift in life.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, to being raised by her mother.
Speaker 1: The sense of when you would speak about Jackie was
Speaker 1: all about really making sure how you presented and how
Speaker 1: and level of respect and how you spoke to people
Speaker 1: like that's a very important thing to pass on to
Speaker 1: your children, because the Cole calls it home training.
Speaker 2: Home training, right. You know, you were not messing around
Speaker 2: with Jackie.
Speaker 3: You know one of our one of the times, one
Speaker 3: of the business stories with Jackie and me is she
Speaker 3: we were we went to visit one time during We
Speaker 3: were bringing food over to the house all the time
Speaker 3: during COVID, but we went over to visit one time
Speaker 3: and she obviously had this thing planned because she was ready.
Speaker 3: So Nicole goes in the other room. She's talking to Clarence.
Speaker 3: I'm talking to Jackie, and she says to me, you
Speaker 3: should make a show on Netflix about Queen Charlotte. Just
Speaker 3: out of the blue, WHOA, And I call Jackie. There
Speaker 3: is a show a Netflix abou Quen Charlotte. It's called Bridgerton.
Speaker 3: She goes, no, no, no, I've seen that show. It's great Jesus,
Speaker 3: but it's you know, the Queen Charlotte's a real person
Speaker 3: and she's got an unbelievable history, and you should do
Speaker 3: something about Queen Charlotte specifically. And I go. She rolls
Speaker 3: her eyes and walks down the hall and she comes
Speaker 3: back with a stack of books about Queen Charlotte and letters,
Speaker 3: handwritten letters that Queen Charlotte had written that Jackie had
Speaker 3: collected at auctions over the years because she was, you know,
Speaker 3: she was obsessed with history and history makers, particularly black history,
Speaker 3: and you know, Queen Charlotte is this incredible figure and
Speaker 3: she's a you know, she's the real deal figure. And
Speaker 3: so I almost, like, almost just being nice, I say,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I'll take a look, you know, because Jackie's
Speaker 3: never done this before. It never suggested or pitched any
Speaker 3: And I get home and start flipping through the material
Speaker 3: and it's remarkable. Her life is remarkable. And I called
Speaker 3: Shanda and I said, Shonda, my mother in law thinks
Speaker 3: you should do this. And I started reading through, and
Speaker 3: I think you should. And in fact, I worry now
Speaker 3: that Charlotte has become a popular character because of Bridgington
Speaker 3: and someone else is going to do it. You should
Speaker 3: do that. You should be the one's true And she
Speaker 3: sent her We sent the materials. As she dug into it,
Speaker 3: she goes, we're doing this right, and it just came
Speaker 3: together that quick.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating. She was sitting on that like she knew.
Speaker 3: She had the stack.
Speaker 2: She was just like, okay, you wait for the right now.
Speaker 1: Watched Bridgerton then said, wait a minute, you're missing a
Speaker 1: character here that needs her story told.
Speaker 3: Yea, and Nicole talks about it. But you know they
Speaker 3: had her girl indoor and she grew up much did
Speaker 3: with Jackie's influence. But they had a wall of power
Speaker 3: basically just like a wall of black people first who
Speaker 3: did this, that and the other and all like people
Speaker 3: who are super accomplished Black people through history, and it
Speaker 3: was Nicole knew every one of them and every story
Speaker 3: growing up, and that was never lost at that history
Speaker 3: was never lost on her. So for Jackie to bring
Speaker 3: Queen Charlotte back to life something that she'd done for
Speaker 3: Nicole her whole life. So she just did it for
Speaker 3: the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Table for two.
Speaker 1: While his wife Nicole had incredible parents, so did Ted Sarantos.
Speaker 2: Long before his time.
Speaker 1: As co CEO of Netflix, Ted grew up with his
Speaker 1: family in Phoenix, Arizona. What lasting influence did his parents
Speaker 1: leave on him? When you lost your dad and I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that there was a time where he couldn't speak.
Speaker 2: But a son losing a father's very seminal.
Speaker 3: It's a big moment.
Speaker 2: How did that change you? Do you think?
Speaker 3: How did it impact me? With my dad? Mostly there's
Speaker 3: a role reversal that happens eventually where you're taking care
Speaker 3: of your parents, right, And my dad was pretty independent
Speaker 3: and before he had his stroke, he lived on a boat.
Speaker 3: It was funny, he was. My parents were very young
Speaker 3: parents in their twenties and four kids together. And then
Speaker 3: my younger brother, who passed away also several years ago,
Speaker 3: came later, so he had raising five kids. They were
Speaker 3: just kids raising kids. And I remember growing up having this,
Speaker 3: you know that it's not that they were you didn't
Speaker 3: like having young, fun parents. When you're younger, you want, right,
Speaker 3: you want your parents to be your parents, and and
Speaker 3: he used to be crazy. But I realized as I
Speaker 3: got older and became a parent of myself, what was
Speaker 3: happening was my parents were just trying to capture the
Speaker 3: little the youth that got away from them, right, because
Speaker 3: they got to get too young. They started babies too young.
Speaker 3: So my dad was in his forties, he was trying
Speaker 3: to find his twenties, you know. And I came to
Speaker 3: understand that later too late in life actually, And same
Speaker 3: with my mom, like you know, and then they didn't
Speaker 3: really have like incredible role models in that way. So
Speaker 3: that for us growing up, it was I always jokingly
Speaker 3: saying I was raised by wolves because we didn't have
Speaker 3: a lot of rules in the house when they had
Speaker 3: set dinner time. The reason they watch TV all night
Speaker 3: is they weren't paying attention. Uh, And part of me
Speaker 3: was like mad about that all the time. And I
Speaker 3: would argue, and I used to argue with my dad
Speaker 3: a lot about all kinds of stuff, right, And then
Speaker 3: I realized at some point that the limited time we
Speaker 3: had together, but a silly thing to do is waste
Speaker 3: that time arguing with them. So he would say something
Speaker 3: that I either was wrong or I disagreed with politically
Speaker 3: or something, and instead of arguing with them, like oh
Speaker 3: that's interesting, and just stop arguing with it. Right, And
Speaker 3: we had a beautiful relationship.
Speaker 2: And once you can make a shift, yeah, big shift.
Speaker 1: That's it comes with age, it comes with wisdom, and
Speaker 1: it also comes with the.
Speaker 2: Real realization that her life and we had this really.
Speaker 3: I mean, as much as I talk about the life
Speaker 3: being chaotic and crazy, there's a real beauty to what
Speaker 3: was happening there too. My sister, my oldest sister, Kathy.
Speaker 3: I mean I think back of like memories and influence
Speaker 3: everything else. I read the book Jaws, which was a
Speaker 3: very racy book at that time when I was very.
Speaker 2: I never read that really.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's very graphic sex scenes and kind of
Speaker 3: and but I got but I took it. I took
Speaker 3: it from from her. And she was a dance in
Speaker 3: an Arthur Murray dance instructure at some point. She did
Speaker 3: this really cool thing when we were growing up. She
Speaker 3: would always bring the kind of orphaned people to Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: and Christmas dinner at our house, and so being exposed
Speaker 3: to a variety of people in the lives and story
Speaker 3: he's started very young for me, and in fact, many
Speaker 3: of the stories that we did, you know, the folks
Speaker 3: who came to that dinner that would likely to be
Speaker 3: a gay dancer, who whose parents kicked him out right
Speaker 3: and didn't have family to spell celebrate the holidays with
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff I'm talking about in the
Speaker 3: late in the mid seventies and eighties in Arizona.
Speaker 2: In Arizona, yeah, yeah, concern, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So she so again she kind of exposed me to
Speaker 3: this world that was you know, bigger than bigger than me. Uh.
Speaker 3: And this the stories that are being told at the
Speaker 3: table are not typical of the Arizona Table stories anyway. Uh.
Speaker 3: And then my sister Jean is this crazed growing up,
Speaker 3: she was this crazy Barbara streisand fan. So I think
Speaker 3: she gave me the sense of a fandom, like a
Speaker 3: real understanding of fandom, and like she would change her
Speaker 3: hairstyle of Barbara did.
Speaker 2: So, and she changed her hairstyle a lot.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, she did the Superman my favorite. This
Speaker 3: is my sister trying desperately to coffee that look in
Speaker 3: the fact, so much so that her boyfriend at the
Speaker 3: time who later became her husband, took me to see
Speaker 3: the uh the filming of the Original starsbod they did it.
Speaker 3: I was like a ten years older. We did it.
Speaker 3: They did at the ASU the opening of the film.
Speaker 2: Offer me yeah, because they had the big scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they had to fill up the stadium, so
Speaker 3: it was the gigantic bill of rock stars. Peter Frampton,
Speaker 3: who was like the biggest start at the time with
Speaker 3: the liner to fill up the stadium, right, Okay, So
Speaker 3: again it's kind of very all these kind of early
Speaker 3: influences I always trying to think about. And then my
Speaker 3: sister Terry, who's two years older than me. Her she
Speaker 3: is like she understood, she understood a relationship with my
Speaker 3: dad better than I did. My dad loved cars and mechanics.
Speaker 3: He could fix anything, can build anything. And she talk
Speaker 3: about meets you where you are. She started doing that
Speaker 3: stuff to get bad more quality time with my dad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and she's you know so, and she's so decided I'm
Speaker 3: watching her house. She kind of and it managed relationships
Speaker 3: in a way by meeting people where they are. It
Speaker 3: was a really cool influence. And my brother Joey who
Speaker 3: passed away too young, but he incredibly talented designer and
Speaker 3: dancer and super gifted guy who just like I just
Speaker 3: feel like he just wasn't built for this world. He
Speaker 3: had He had a really hard time and for someone
Speaker 3: so gifted and talented, he just had a really hard
Speaker 3: time getting things together all the time. So and but
Speaker 3: his kind of just passion for life and living life
Speaker 3: was something that was irew.
Speaker 1: What an interesting I did not know any of this
Speaker 1: in regard to you, how you grew up and and
Speaker 1: I think having the young parents created this like camp
Speaker 1: in a way that.
Speaker 2: You could, you know, become who you are and like
Speaker 2: lean into.
Speaker 3: It and maybe you don't ever know what when you're
Speaker 3: in the middle of it, you know, really have to
Speaker 3: look back at I think my favorite show as a kid,
Speaker 3: I used to love that Happy Days of Her usurely.
Speaker 2: I mean that lineup, I forget about it.
Speaker 3: But I also remember watching because my dad. My dad
Speaker 3: smoked a lot, so we never went to the movies
Speaker 3: because he didn't want to go to I was though smoking.
Speaker 3: But if it was about the fifties we're in, that
Speaker 3: was that was his thing.
Speaker 2: Go two hours? What was the Richard American?
Speaker 3: American American everywhere? All the Americans and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: We saw them all you got drive in?
Speaker 3: We did. We went to the big sky drive in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why don't you bring those back?
Speaker 3: I know it was a great COVID was going to
Speaker 3: bring him back and it didn't stick.
Speaker 2: You drive in the cars going up and down window,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, the kids out of the trunk. People
Speaker 2: are running around, little kids in their pajamas.
Speaker 1: So soundestly, I mean we used to go and those
Speaker 1: were really special night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was fun. But also I was thinking about
Speaker 3: Happy Days, like the influence of that time period, you know,
Speaker 3: because iknew about knew about the fifties, I knew about
Speaker 3: old stuff and he but I remember our whole family
Speaker 3: watching Love American Style too, watching what became the pilot
Speaker 3: for Happiness was.
Speaker 2: On Love Oh that they had a little vignette.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Love America Style was. I mean we were young,
Speaker 2: the come on with the.
Speaker 1: Heart that was like the red, white and blue and
Speaker 1: it was like a vignette to a vignette. I mean
Speaker 1: my parents were out, my sister and I were like young.
Speaker 1: It was like that was like the ten o'clock sah.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like racy, and that's where
Speaker 1: kids don't have that they don't have like what we had.
Speaker 2: Also, you know the you can only see something once
Speaker 2: a week, and you.
Speaker 1: Know you were like looking forward to happy days and
Speaker 1: line I can tell you the eight is Enough, Charlie's
Speaker 1: Angels Vegas lineup on ABC or.
Speaker 2: You know, you just knew what you were into.
Speaker 3: And it was I was saying, I attribute a lot
Speaker 3: of my what drew me to television was order, like
Speaker 3: schedule and order, and I knew what time things were
Speaker 3: on and where I could find them and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, and the house was not orderly at all.
Speaker 3: And I talk about my brothers and sister and my dad,
Speaker 3: but I didn't tell you anything about my mom, who
Speaker 3: is the funniest woman you've ever met. The life of
Speaker 3: the party.
Speaker 2: My mom.
Speaker 3: My mom was the life of the party at all times. Hysterical,
Speaker 3: hysterically funny and irresponsible.
Speaker 2: Okay, did she smoke too, She was.
Speaker 3: She was great. She would smoke and then quit, and
Speaker 3: then smoke, then quit. She was like she was selectively addictive.
Speaker 3: And I think about her personality, but to everything were
Speaker 3: smoking driving, We drove across country. We moved from New
Speaker 3: Jersey to Arizona. When I was a kid, we drove
Speaker 3: across country. I don't think they cracked the window.
Speaker 2: Was smoking away. We were just like no.
Speaker 1: Seatbelts, crawling up and down, having them exactly try to
Speaker 1: hate you in the back seat when he was especially
Speaker 1: with as many.
Speaker 3: So here's my growing up. My parents, my mom, we
Speaker 3: were always out of money. I always thought we were poor, poor,
Speaker 3: but actually my mom they were just terrible with money.
Speaker 3: Because my dad was an electric working union electrician, so
Speaker 3: they probably had enough money. But we're always we always
Speaker 3: had like the utility some one utility was always off,
Speaker 3: so it was called dueling utilities. The electric was on,
Speaker 3: the gas was off, the thought, the phone was off.
Speaker 3: So it's like all the constantly. Again, they were just
Speaker 3: bad managing money. So we did one year for Christmas.
Speaker 3: My dad was it was during a layoff period and
Speaker 3: we had no money for Christmas and my dad, uh
Speaker 3: built so I'm gonna make the kids gifts for Christmas
Speaker 3: and he made us. I still have mine. He's like
Speaker 3: chests like a treasure Mine was like a treasure chest
Speaker 3: a store like the store, yeah, and built up and
Speaker 3: they're all different, they're different looking, and uh like I said,
Speaker 3: I still have that gift. I know have And my
Speaker 3: mom she was on the mission and okay, we're gonna
Speaker 3: make gifts this year. Okay, I got it, but she
Speaker 3: couldn't take it. So like Christmas, Eves went out and
Speaker 3: bounced checks and bought us all crazy toys and everything else.
Speaker 2: So I still have those toys.
Speaker 3: I don't have any of those toys, but I still
Speaker 3: have the chest.
Speaker 2: So what's things like that like?
Speaker 1: Again, as you look back, like I can look back
Speaker 1: on all the toys, I don't have things like that
Speaker 1: that become the most meaningful.
Speaker 3: And we used to go on these vacates. Once a
Speaker 3: year we go on a vacation and we usually always
Speaker 3: the sad go for a week, okay, And one year
Speaker 3: we went and this is per classic my mom and
Speaker 3: classic my dad. We go and check in the hotel,
Speaker 3: and then the last day we're going to check out,
Speaker 3: my mom tells my dad all your money to pay
Speaker 3: the bill, to pay the hotel. Boll So of course
Speaker 3: you wouldn't cancel the trip. You're just gonna go figure out,
Speaker 3: figured it out, and I'll wait till the end, wait
Speaker 3: till the exactly so that my dad goes to the
Speaker 3: marina and fix his boats until he makes enough money
Speaker 3: to pay for the hotel.
Speaker 1: See said, all those stories you said make you you
Speaker 1: yeah and bring you to the call telling you it's
Speaker 1: like there's like no coincidences in this world. Like it
Speaker 1: gives you, like the backbone, It gives you the integrity,
Speaker 1: It gives you the ambition, it gives you the heart
Speaker 1: because to have dueling utilities to be like in that
Speaker 1: situation where like you're like, oh no, like you're kid,
Speaker 1: you're taking it in.
Speaker 3: And I really like now I look back and like
Speaker 3: I needed like we needed the fun of that vacation,
Speaker 3: and we needed to see my dad's work ethic to
Speaker 3: pay for it, right, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: it's that that exposure to it.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Did you come Arizona to Los Angeles? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I went. It was a period of time. So I
Speaker 3: came up through home and working video stores first and
Speaker 3: then through home video distribution, and the distribution business got
Speaker 3: dried up. Basically, the Blockbuster Video went direct and just
Speaker 3: squeezed out all the distributors, and we were the biggest
Speaker 3: distributor at the time, and so we took our billion
Speaker 3: dollar private company I was working at called et D
Speaker 3: lost like six or seven hundred million dollars in sales
Speaker 3: overnight as a Blockbuster. So we started shutting down plants.
Speaker 3: It was like it was not a great time professional
Speaker 3: and I knew I wanted to be in the business
Speaker 3: and I wanted to be in some steer in some
Speaker 3: steering capacity. So I'm gonna have to be in California
Speaker 3: to do that. I didn't know what, you know what
Speaker 3: that in what form that would take. I got recruited
Speaker 3: from a company a West Coast video video city that's
Speaker 3: their headquarters was in Torrance at the time, uh, in Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: and got recruited to co to work for them doing
Speaker 3: I was ahead of products, so basically the programming for
Speaker 3: the stores, which is a Hollywood video kind of size
Speaker 3: video chain. Yeah, uh and marked and marketing and merchandising,
Speaker 3: and so I did that for a pretty short time,
Speaker 3: about a year. But that's what moved me to LA
Speaker 3: And then I got in that year at the at
Speaker 3: that chain, I did a deal. It was the big
Speaker 3: emergence of DVD and I did a deal with this
Speaker 3: with Warner Brothers and Sony Columbia then to do revenue
Speaker 3: sharing on DVD, which was unheard of at the time. Yes,
Speaker 3: And it got into the trade magazines and read Hastings
Speaker 3: read the magazine article and said, I need that guy,
Speaker 3: I need that deal wow, And read knew, you know,
Speaker 3: he's a brilliant engineer, had a great idea for this,
Speaker 3: you know, for Netflix, envisioned it to be exactly what
Speaker 3: Netflix is now. And when I talked to him first
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. And when you were getting like the DVDs
Speaker 2: out of the machine, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well for us, it was you know the or this
Speaker 3: back then er we're doing a right mail.
Speaker 2: When I first met up, and it was so harsh
Speaker 2: for me to wrap my head around.
Speaker 3: But this is rethinking. Like he went to the video
Speaker 3: store and got a forty dollars late charge for Apollo thirteen,
Speaker 3: and he said, this is toumb this is stupid. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna do something about this. And instead of like protesting
Speaker 3: the late feet, he built the company. And somebody said,
Speaker 3: these things called DVDs are coming, and Read had this idea, like,
Speaker 3: why don't we use the mail to send the videos
Speaker 3: back and forth? They were the tapes are too heavy,
Speaker 3: but DVDs were light.
Speaker 2: Enough put the whole thing together.
Speaker 3: He went to Tower Records and about five CDs and
Speaker 3: mailed them to himself. He goes, oh, this will work.
Speaker 3: That's the genius of Read Hastings. And then when I
Speaker 3: met him, he described Netflix pretty much as it sits
Speaker 3: right now, full digital media company. That the Internet at
Speaker 3: that time was so slow and so expensive that was unfathomable,
Speaker 3: and but he said, no, no, the Internet's going to get
Speaker 3: twice as fast at half the price every eighteen months.
Speaker 3: It's called More's law. And I just nodded, like I
Speaker 3: knew what.
Speaker 2: He's talking about. I had no idea what he was
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 3: And I can't remember coming back home and thinking, I
Speaker 3: don't know if he's crazy or he's a genius or both,
Speaker 3: but he's going to do something to change the world, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was like, yeah, I just I love how
Speaker 1: life works. I love the you know, how you got
Speaker 1: you get put into different rooms or people start to say, okay, well.
Speaker 3: That deal put me on Read's radar, which led to
Speaker 3: this role at Netflix. But if it was a different
Speaker 3: executive than Read, he most it would never allow a
Speaker 3: guy like me to exist, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And he gave me even when you know we did
Speaker 3: the deal for House of Cards was our first series
Speaker 3: we did the that was the first deal we did.
Speaker 3: We first, Lillly Hammer was the first one to get
Speaker 3: on our air, but House of Cards was the first
Speaker 3: big deal we did. And I remember at the time
Speaker 3: He's like it was it was more than the entire
Speaker 3: budget we had for streaming at the time, and we
Speaker 3: did the deal, and Read afterwards it's like, why did
Speaker 3: you do that? When I did in the original cut
Speaker 3: that business and and I told him, I said, I read,
Speaker 3: I did the risk, risk reward analysis on huh, And
Speaker 3: I said, if this works will fundamentally change our business.
Speaker 3: If it doesn't, we will have overpaid for a show.
Speaker 3: We do it all the time. And he goes, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm totally supportive and just set and we're off to
Speaker 3: the rasis wow and a different He created a company
Speaker 3: and a culture that gave me the running room and
Speaker 3: the confidence to do that. And then also, didn't you
Speaker 3: know at any time we'll be tripped up anywhere along
Speaker 3: the way. He didn't crush you and kill you. And
Speaker 3: it's like, which is key.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the humanity in it, in the humanity in you.
Speaker 2: That's what comes across.
Speaker 1: Because when you have those kind of like influences, people
Speaker 1: tend to pass that out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I look back to it. That is what
Speaker 3: struck me about that first meeting with Reading ninety nine
Speaker 3: was that he talked about this gigantic company that didn't exist,
Speaker 3: and he talked about a company that was going to
Speaker 3: be around after him, which is interesting now I think
Speaker 3: about at this kind of succession and I look at it.
Speaker 3: He was thinking about succession before the company was even built,
Speaker 3: you know, if because if you want a company to
Speaker 3: be around a long time. It implies there will be
Speaker 3: succession exactly so like and even the way he toyed
Speaker 3: around with the co CEO models and all these kind
Speaker 3: of things, all selfless all ways to make this company
Speaker 3: that will last, you know, for generations and generations and
Speaker 3: you know, way after you're going to be around. You
Speaker 3: have to be able to at your company without yourself, right,
Speaker 3: which is hard for especially for a founder.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent believe me, coming from a family business
Speaker 1: that lasted ninety four years.
Speaker 2: I think that was one of the.
Speaker 1: Things that they stopped thinking about was just to you know,
Speaker 1: you know, not only to be innovative during a time
Speaker 1: of such great innovation in business, but also how was
Speaker 1: it going to look. I will take your line, I
Speaker 1: will meet you there, Because I think it's so powerful
Speaker 1: in life, from even raising your daughter who's seventeen and
Speaker 1: having moments right now where we're sort of at each
Speaker 1: other to take a step back to say, okay, where
Speaker 1: is she at?
Speaker 2: How do I meet her there?
Speaker 1: And how do I teach her to also understand how
Speaker 1: to you know, how do we all meet each other
Speaker 1: there at a time where right now it's a very.
Speaker 3: We've been so much energy trying to drag people to
Speaker 3: where we are right exactly, intead of saying now I'll
Speaker 3: meet you there, and so we can't get there together.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's it's it's it's so beautiful
Speaker 1: and I really want people to If you haven't read
Speaker 1: Nicole's memoir, think I think You'll be happy, which is
Speaker 1: the text, right.
Speaker 3: It is a text that Nicole got from her mother
Speaker 3: six hours before she was I think.
Speaker 2: You'll be happy, and you're you're right. It's all like
Speaker 2: how do you say it?
Speaker 1: And you know, Norman ly said to me once and
Speaker 1: I only met him once and I was sat on
Speaker 1: his podcast and he said something, but I think it
Speaker 1: is on a moment right here is if I changed
Speaker 1: one piece of my life, one piece.
Speaker 2: I would not be sitting here with you right now.
Speaker 2: Everything I've done brings us to this moment.
Speaker 1: And then he goes and now it's gone, like it's okay,
Speaker 1: like now, and I was like, like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is Normally I.
Speaker 3: Always think about it in terms of perspective, right, And
Speaker 3: Norman had that way of putting everything in perspective before
Speaker 3: a meal, looking around the table, just telling everyone, wait,
Speaker 3: imagine how many things had to happen just like that
Speaker 3: for us to be here right now, and you just
Speaker 3: pause and think about it. Right, It's like everything that
Speaker 3: went wrong right is now part of this thing that
Speaker 3: went so perfectly right. Yeah. And I think that's a
Speaker 3: really great lesson for Nicole and for the book and
Speaker 3: for her story, which is all these things that went
Speaker 3: wrong actually ended up in this gigantic big picture of
Speaker 3: where things that are so right exactly and so worth
Speaker 3: being grateful for us completely. And it's that kind of
Speaker 3: grateful to be grateful in the face of incredible loss
Speaker 3: and tragedy. Something medical role models for me, and hopefully
Speaker 3: when you read her books you can role model for everybody.
Speaker 2: I think she does.
Speaker 1: If I sort of as we come sort of to
Speaker 1: the conclusion of our lunch, and I hope everyone has
Speaker 1: enjoyed your your So I could spend hours talking to
Speaker 1: if I had to ask you, if you had to,
Speaker 1: like say a word about your in laws and your wife,
Speaker 1: like to just one word that comes to you to
Speaker 1: describe Jackie or or feeling, what would they be?
Speaker 3: Elegant? Yeah, true elegance, True elegance. It's which is, you know,
Speaker 3: a way of over you know, captured, you know, encapsuling
Speaker 3: grace and dignity and elegance that all comes together like
Speaker 3: it was everything put together, everything thought of. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just elegance, right, And you're.
Speaker 1: Forward to I will meet you, you know, I will
Speaker 1: meet you there for Nicole's book. You say, I try
Speaker 1: to keep up. I try to find the same comfort
Speaker 1: she does. I love where it takes her and I
Speaker 1: love to meet her there. And I think that is
Speaker 1: a beautiful sentiment. And thank you Ted for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Thank you wonderful good lunch.
Speaker 2: Thanks everyone for pulling up a chair. Thank you for
Speaker 2: pulling up a chair.
Speaker 5: I love our lunches and never forget the romance of
Speaker 5: a meal. If you enjoy the show, please tell a
Speaker 5: friend and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Table
Speaker 5: for Two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven
Speaker 5: three seven Park and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce
Speaker 5: Bossi and Nathan Ca. Our supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 5: Our editors are Vincent to Johnny and Cas b Bias.
Speaker 5: Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 5: Our sound engineers are mil B Klein, Jess Krainich, Evan Taylor.
Speaker 3: And Jesse Funk.
Speaker 5: Our music supervisor is Randall poster Our talent booking is
Speaker 5: done by Jane Sarkin.
Speaker 2: Table for two's social media manager is Gracie Wiener.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Scherer, Kevin Yvane, Bobby Bauer,
Speaker 1: Alison Kanter Graber.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 5: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.